1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a testing device that is installed in a toilet for testing for components such as glucose, blood, protein, hormones, and vitamins that are contained in urine, and particularly to a urine glucose testing device.
The present invention further relates to a method of providing a home health care service that provides health care services to help an individual in his own home (hereinafter referred to as an xe2x80x9cat-home patientxe2x80x9d) to manage his or her own health using the testing device; and to a system for providing a home health care service to implement this method.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the following explanation, the terms xe2x80x9chomexe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cat-homexe2x80x9d do not necessarily mean that the individual is in his or her own home. The concept xe2x80x9cat homexe2x80x9d may also include cases in which the individual is in a facility that is not provided for health care, such as the company or government office where the individual is employed.
Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 319647/96 proposes a toilet-installed urine glucose inspector device that has a urine inspecting capability to sample and analyze urine by using a toilet and thus aid in an individual""s health check. This device relates particularly to a sampling device for sampling urine that an individual has excreted into a toilet for urinalysis, and more specifically, to a washing mechanism of a urine collection vessel.
In this sampling device, a urine collection vessel is attached to the end of a swing arm. When sampling urine, the urine collection vessel moves by the rotation of the swing arm from a rest position that is directly below the toilet seat to a sampling position that is inside the toilet [bowl]. Urine that is collected in the urine collection vessel is conducted by way of a urine tube and urine intake tube to a urinalysis device that is outside the toilet and then tested. After sampling the urine, the urine collection vessel returns by the rotation of the swing arm to the rest position that is below the seat, where it is washed by a washing fluid that is sprayed from a nozzle.
This urine inspector device has the following defects:
The separation of the position of the urine collection vessel from the location of the device that inspects the collected urine necessitates not only piping such as a urine intake tube and a urine suction tube, but in addition, a pump for drawing up the urine to the urine inspector and solenoid valves for controlling the introduction and discharge of urine to the urine inspector.
The device is therefore large, its mechanism is complex, its potential for breakdown is high, and its maintenance costs are high. The device has additional problems in that it requires a considerable amount of time for a urine test, it uses a large quantity of chemical agents, and it must hold a large quantity of water for maintain the interior of the device clean. This example is hereinafter referred to as the first example of the prior art.
Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 170512/98 describes a toilet with a urine glucose sensor capable of easily checking for urine glucose. This example is hereinafter referred to as the second example of the prior art.
This toilet is provided with: an arm, a urine glucose sensor advancing/retracting mechanism for advancing the arm to a prescribed position in the toilet and then retracting it; and a sensor section that senses urine glucose. The sensor section is attached to the end of the arm so as to allow easy removal. After excretion of urine, the urine glucose sensor is lowered and dipped into urine in a receptacle of the toilet. The urine glucose contained in the urine in the receptacle is then checked. After use, the sensor section is subjected to washing with water, application of protective fluid, and is then retracted to a housed position. The urine glucose sensor can thus be used repeatedly.
The problem with the second example of the prior art is that when urine is discharged, the urine mixes with water that normally fills the urine receptacle. The mixture ratio of this urine and water mixture is not always fixed. For example, the same individual may sometimes pass a large quantity and at other times pass a small quantity of urine. In addition, the amount of urine discharged each time may also be influenced by temperature or the individual""s age, with the result that reproducible measurement values cannot be obtained.
Furthermore, the specification describes that, in order to obtain an accurate measurement value, it is preferable to eliminate water from the receptacle by performing operations such as first flushing to rinse out the urine receptacle and additional blowing with compressed air.
As a result, the urine sensor according to the second example of the prior art is capable of only an approximate check, and various drive units or additional mechanisms are necessary if an accurate check is desired.
Explanation next concerns home health care. Conventionally, methods of managing health at home have typically involved regular recording of the measurements of instruments that can easily be procured for home use such as a thermometer, scale, sphygmomanometer [blood pressure gauge], or body fat scale and then consulting a doctor if abnormal values occur.
For diseases such as diabetes, renal disease, and liver disease in which the morbidity can be judged based on the values of chemical components of urine, urine is collected in a provided container and then inspected at a hospital or health center.
Services have also been available as health care services on the Internet in which, through the input of qualitative data of an individual""s morbidity and quantitative numerical data such as height, weight, and data from periodic medical examinations, possible diseases are automatically displayed along with a doctor""s comments.
However, the above-described home health care methods and Internet health care services have the following problems.
First, an at-home patient will not seek a doctor""s diagnosis or give an input to the Internet regarding his or her morbidity in the absence of symptoms that he or she notices him- or herself. As a result, an at-home patient may neglect to receive a doctor""s diagnosis if he or she is not conscious of symptoms. Even if the at-home patient is aware of symptoms, he or she may lack the medical knowledge to judge whether the symptoms call for a doctor""s diagnosis and the patient may therefore fail to receive a doctor""s attention.
A second problem, relating in particular to health care for a morbidity such as diabetes that requires urinalysis, is the inconvenience of having to go to a hospital or health center to have an inspection of urine. This inconvenience originates from the impossibility of checking for urine glucose at home. Furthermore, as is well known, urine glucose varies with the passage of time after eating or with an individual""s physiological condition. The patient is therefore normally required to abstain from eating for a prescribed period of time preceding a urine-test when receiving an examination at a hospital or health center. Due to this inconvenience, there has been the problem that, for morbities that by nature require daily health care, no method has existed for health care other than yearly periodic examinations by the company or government office in which the patient is employed, or by the municipality.
The third problem is that, with regard to home health care services up to the present, it has been difficult to obtain, at home, sufficient and successive data required for health care for a morbidity. As a result, the at-home patient derives relatively little benefit relative to the difficulty entailed for input of the actual state of health of the at-home patient. There is consequently the problem that home health care services are not usually practical as a business.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a toilet-installed urine testing device that offers an improvement over the above-described first and second examples of the prior art as well as can provide easy, at-home urine testing over a period of time.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a home health care service employing the urine testing device of the present invention.
In order to achieve the above-described objects of the present invention, the urine testing device of the present invention comprising: a urine collector for collecting urine inside a toilet; a biosensor exchangeably attached inside said urine collector for detecting predetermined chemical components contained in urine to generate electrical signals; a support member for supporting said urine collector and also supporting a transmission path of said electrical signals, the support member being constructed so that urine collector may be automatically or manually moved from a housing location to a prescribed use position in the toilet bowl and vice versa; and a signal processor disposed outside the toilet for processing electrical signals supplied from the biosensor through the transmission path.
The signal processor preferably comprises an arithmetic unit that operates said electrical signals and at least one of a storage unit that stores at least one of the electrical signals and the operation results of the arithmetic unit, and a display unit that displays at least one of the electrical signals and the operation results.
The signal processor is preferably provided with a sensor calibration device.
The signal processor is preferably provided with terminals for transmitting the electrical signals and operation results of the arithmetic unit.
In this way, when the urine collector is moved to a predetermined use position to collect urine at the time of excretion, the urine is poured onto the biosensor attached inside the urine collector. The biosensor detects predetermined chemical components and generates electrical signals inside the bowl. The electrical signals is sent to the signal processor located outside the bowl through the support member.
Thus, there is no need to conduct the urine to a signal processor disposed at a location separated from the toilet bowl by pump, as with the case of the first example of the prior art.
Consequently, there is no need for components such as tubes, pumps, and solenoid valves, so that the urine testing device can be made smaller and lighter. In addition, the simplification in structure both reduces fabrication costs and decreases the potential for breakdowns caused by dirt or foam. Furthermore, since there is no need to dilute the urine, the use of chemical agents can be greatly reduced, and the costs of using the device can be decreased. Finally, the present urine testing device shortens the measurement time and therefore allows urine tests to be carried out more frequently.
Unlike the urine testing device of the second example of the prior art, the position in which urine is collected is not fixed in the present invention.
Thus, urine can be collected at any desired location without mixing of urine and water. It is to be noted that the desired location for the urine collector differs depending on, for example, sex.
In this way, the problem of the second example of the prior art can be overcome.
Next, concerning at-home health care service, the following setups are necessary in order that at-home health care service is practical as a business:
1) any at-home patient can create measurement data necessary for health care of his or her own even if the at-home patient has no special technical knowledge;
2) it is feasible to collect measurement data created by a great number of at-home patients without difficulties; and
3) it is feasible to manage centralizedly the collected data and to infer the health conditions of an at-home patient base on the measurement data and provide the at-home patient with an appropriate service for the inferred health conditions.
In order to realize the above-described setups, a first method of providing a home heath care service according to the present invention comprises steps of:
constructing a health care center on the Internet, said health care center having personal data necessary for the health care of registered at-home patients as basic health care data and also having the capability of inferring the health conditions of the at-home patients from measurement data provided by the at-home patients and said basic health care data and offering services necessary for health care or services appropriate to the inferred health conditions to said at-home patients;
distributing biosensor devices to at-home patients who wish to receive a home health care service, said biosensor device having a capability of detecting predetermined chemical components contained in a substance discharged from a human body and automatically generating electrical measurement data at the position of discharge as occasion arises;
collecting the measurement data of each registered at-home patient to said health care center from at-home patients by way of the Internet; and
managing time-varying health conditions of at-home patients over a period of time based on the collected measurement data as well as said basic health care data and offering necessary services for maintaining the health of at-home patients.
Capability of the biosensor device of automatically creating the measurement data at the discharge position allows the at-home patent easily to create measurement data by a simple operation that he or she only moves the biosensor to the use position from the housing position without necessitating any technical knowledge for obtaining the measurement data.
In this way, setup 1) above can be realized.
Creating the measurement data in a form of an electric signal allows the data to be collected easily to the health care center constructed on the Internet by way of the Internet.
In this way, setup 2) above can be realized.
The measurement data collected from the at-home patients are subject to centralized management of the health care center that has a capability of providing services necessary for health care or services appropriate for the inferred health conditions to the at-home patients.
In this way, setup 3) above can be realized.
It is to be noted that the term xe2x80x9cposition of dischargexe2x80x9d used in connection with a biosensor device means the position of the substance as it is discharged, i.e., in the case in which the substance is urine, the position of discharge refers to xe2x80x9cinside a toilet bowlxe2x80x9d. This term is distinguished in concept from a position to which the discharged substance is guided artificially by a pipe or the like after discharge.
It is also to be noted that the detection of the discharge by the biosensor is not necessarily performed every time urine, for example, is excreted. However, because the chemical composition of an excrement from a human body ordinarily changes depending on the physiological conditions of the human body, it is desirable to detect a discharge or an excrement allowing for a time of an event that affects the physiology of a human body such as a mealtime or sleeping hours.
A system for providing a home health care service according to the present invention comprises:
a health care center constructed on the Internet and provided with a database for registering, as basic health care data, personal data necessary for the health care of registered at-home patients and for storing measurement data provided by at-home patients as occasion arises over a period of time, said health care center having a function of inferring the health conditions of the at-home patients based on said measurement data as well as said basic health care data and offering services necessary for health care or services appropriate to the inferred health conditions, to the at-home patients; and
a service recipient device belonging to an at-home patient comprising: a biosensor for detecting predetermined chemical components that are contained in a substance discharged from said at-home patient and converting the detected values of the chemical components to electrical signals at the point of discharge when the discharge is conducted; a signal processor for processing an output of the biosensor and automatically generating measurement data as well as performing control of the communication between the service recipient device and the health care center; and a information terminal for interfacing the signal processor and said Internet;
wherein: the service recipient device delivers, under output control of the signal processor, measurement data that have been generated over a period of time together with time data that indicate the times when the biosensor detected the chemical component to said Internet, designating the health care center as the transmission destination; and the service recipient device receives, under input control of the signal processor, information transmitted from the health care center by way of the Internet; and
wherein the health care center, when judging the transmission source of received measurement data being a service recipient device belonging to a registered at-home patient, stores the measurement data to the data base, and as demand arises, the health care center infers the health condition of the at-home patient based on stored measurement data and with reference to the registered basic health care data and offers information necessary for health care or services appropriate for the inferred health condition, to the at-home patient.
Because a biosensor automatically generates electrical measurement data of prescribed chemical components that are contained within urine, the first home health care service system of the present invention enable the collection of necessary data without requiring the at-home patient to perform any inconvenient procedures. The management of the health of a large number of at-home patients can therefore be centralized, and a home health care service can thus be organized as a business.
The substance discharged from said at-home patient can be urine excreted from the at-home patient.
In this embodiment, the biosensor, arranged inside a toilet at the time of operation, detects those measurement components among the chemical components of urine that relate to a morbidity and that change according to a daily health condition, and converts the detected values to electrical signals.
The signal processor is arranged outside of the toilet, processes electrical signals generated by said biosensor, and generates measurement data.
The health care center preferably includes an expert system for inferring the health condition of an at-home patient based on measurement data provided by the at-home patient and said basic health care data registered in a database. If the possibility of a disease of the at-home patient is inferred, the health care center searches for optimum advice for the disease through the expert system.
The health care center can have full-time specialists as staffs, or affiliated specialists who are linked to the health care center over the Internet, who are able to diagnose the health condition of the at-home patient based on measurement data provided by at-home patient and said basic health care data to provide support to the at-home patient for health care.
The health care center preferably has full-time specialists as staffs, or affiliated specialists who are linked with the health care center on the Internet, who are able to provide support to the at-home patient regarding dietary treatment, exercise therapy, or medication, as a service appropriate to an inferred health condition.
The health care center preferably affiliates with a food supplier, who is linked to the health care center on the Internet and offers food planned by the health care center to at-home patients for implementing dietary treatment appropriate for an inferred health condition.
The health care center preferably offers, as a basic service to all registered at-home patients, measurement data that have been organized and processed so as to allow easy comprehension of information relating to a specific morbidity associated with chemical components that have been measured by the biosensor. The health care center can offer, as a selective service that can be selected by at-home patients, support provided by said specialists for the specific morbidity.
As the selective service, a precise examination for a morbidity that has been inferred from measurement data can be performed at home using instructional information and materials that have been sent beforehand to an at-home patient.
The health care center preferably has a business-affiliation with a testing company having a function of testing a morbidity of at-home patients, and, as a selective service, provides the testing company with basic health care data and measurement data of an at-home patient and has the testing company perform prescribed tests of the morbidity.
The morbidity can be diabetes, and the biosensor is a sensor capable of measuring glucose, ketone bodies, hydroxybutyric acid, C peptides, or other chemical components that relate to diabetes.
The morbidity can be a liver disease, and said biosensor is a sensor capable of measuring bile acid, pyruvic acid, urobilinogen, bilirubin, or other chemical components that relate to liver diseases.
The morbidity can be a renal disease, and the biosensor is a sensor capable of measuring protein, albumin, creatinine, oxalic acid, or other chemical components that relate to renal diseases.
The biosensor can be a sensor capable of measuring lactic acid, the pH of urine, or other chemical components that serve as indicators of the degree of stress or fatigue.
The service recipient device preferably has the functions of measuring the number of times a biosensor has been used, the cumulative amount of time the biosensor has been used and a calibration value of a biosensor and sending these measurement values to said health care center as biosensor maintenance data.
In this embodiment, the health care center, as a biosensor maintenance service, stores the maintenance data in a database, notifies the at-home patient of the current biosensor state, and gives advance notice of the life of the biosensor to the at-home patient, based on the maintenance data stored in the database.
A second method of providing a home health care service is implemented in the above-described system for providing a home health care service having a capability of providing the biosensor maintenance service.
The method includes steps of:
analyzing trends in frequency of use based on the maintenance data stored in said database,
deducing the time for biosensor exchange and the time that consumable supplies become necessary,
delivering necessary materials before there is a lack of necessary materials, and
determining monthly service charges according to the frequency of the exchange of the biosensors and the supply of the consumables, and billing the charges.
A third method of providing a home health care service by means of a health care center constructed on the Internet. The health care center has the functions of: registering, as basic health care data, personal data necessary for the health care of registered at-home patients; inferring the health conditions of at-home patients based on measurement data relating to a specific morbidity and said basic health care data, wherein said measurement data are provided by at-home patients; and offering services necessary for health care or services appropriate for inferred health conditions to at-home patients.
The third method includes steps of:
classifying said personal data and the morbidities of registered at-home patients into a plurality of categories based on measurement data, and creating lists of at-home patients belonging to each of these categories;
recruiting at-home patients who wish to communicate with each other by way of said Internet; and
releasing the list of at-home patients of the same category as a recruited at-home patient to the recruited at-home patient.
A fourth method of providing a home heath care service, includes steps of:
constructing a health care center on the Internet, said health care center having personal data necessary for the health care of registered at-home patients as basic health care data and also having the capability of inferring the health conditions of the at-home patients from measurement data provided by the at-home patients and basic health care data and offering services necessary for health care or services appropriate to the inferred health conditions to said at-home patients;
distributing biosensor devices to at-home patients who wish to receive a home health care service, said biosensor device having a capability of detecting predetermined chemical components contained in a substance discharged from a human body and automatically generating electrical measurement data at the position of discharge as occasion arises;
collecting the measurement data of each registered at-home patient to said health care center from at-home patients by way of said Internet; and
issuing a certificate for requesting a discount of a life insurance premium when said measurement data are within a prescribed range for at least both a predetermined period and a predetermined number of times.
The above and other objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description referring to the accompanying drawings which illustrate examples of preferred embodiments of the present invention.